


Velvet

by mrs_leary (julie)



Category: Merlin (TV) RPF
Genre: M/M, mild cross-dressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-03
Updated: 2012-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-15 14:06:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julie/pseuds/mrs_leary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a reason why Colin keeps wearing velvet suits, you know…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Velvet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [altocello](https://archiveofourown.org/users/altocello/gifts), [grasonas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grasonas/gifts).



[ ](http://s737.photobucket.com/albums/xx15/mrs_leary/fic/velvet.jpg)

♦

‘Put them on,’ Bradley said. He’d turned up on Colin’s doorstep – not entirely unexpectedly – the evening after their _Radio Times_ photoshoot, and neither of them said anything as Colin stepped back to let the man in. But as soon as the door was closed and locked, Bradley looked at him very levelly with his seriously unimpressed face, and ordered, ‘Put them on.’

Colin wordlessly turned and headed down to the bedroom, stripped off everything he was wearing, and pulled on the worn old purple velvet jeans he’d bought on a whim once down the markets. Then he padded back out to the living room, barefoot and bare–chested, and otherwise snugly encased in a tawdry kind of luxury.

Bradley’s gaze dropped to watch Colin’s hips as he walked back towards him, Bradley’s expression making it clear he was still seriously unimpressed by all this – but underneath that it was equally clear he was wrecked by lust. ‘Velvet,’ Bradley muttered in complaint as Colin continued relentlessly towards him. ‘Why do you even…?’

That needed no reply other than Colin walking right into Bradley, the hair on his bare chest prickling as it met Bradley’s sweater, his arms lifting around Bradley’s shoulders, and Bradley’s left arm gathering him in round the waist – while his right hand reached down, Bradley leaning forward to wrap palm and fingers around Colin’s thigh just above his knee, and then that hand ran up against the nap to his hip in one hot rasping caress.

‘That’s the wrong way,’ Colin thickly observed, his mouth seeking Bradley’s, following it even while Bradley was too distracted to bother with kisses. ‘You’re rubbing me up the wrong way.’

That earned him a guffaw, and Bradley straightened a little to make their connection more of an embrace – though his hand lingered on Colin’s hip, his thumb fretfully stroking down against the velvet that stretched taut over the hollow just by the point of bone. ‘This entire _thing_ is the wrong way,’ Bradley returned with epic frustration.

Which caused Colin a pang beneath his breastbone, though he’d known all along this was just some weird conjunction of needs, some random effect of a mess of causes that neither of them had seen coming. Bradley had been ensnared, and deeply. But only momentarily. This, too, would pass, as everything that engaged Colin’s heart passed. His career had been dream after dream coming true, but he’d always been ill–starred when it came to love.

Bradley wasn’t such an oaf that he didn’t sense the pang, that he didn’t feel bad about it. _‘Colin,’_ he said on a gust of breath, as if even he thought it all rather a tragedy.

Colin wasn’t getting into all that. He ground his hips and everything between them against Bradley – and that was distraction enough. Bradley’s eager cock kicked into full hardness, and his hands were suddenly fumbling at the buttons on the purple jeans – they barely managed to get down the hall to the bedroom and fall back across the mattress before their cocks were freed and they were rutting against each other with the same hot dry friction as they felt when Bradley ran his hands again and again up Colin’s velvet–clad thighs.

They were a glorious sore panting mess afterwards, lying sprawled there wherever they’d fallen as they parted.

‘God!’ said Bradley. Perhaps the world had quit spinning and tilting round his head, as it finally had for Colin. ‘God, why d’you do it?’

Colin frowned. ‘Do what?’

‘Wear velvet, damn you! It’s so – It’s so –’

‘Sexy?’

‘Passé!’

Colin just looked at the man. Was it really not obvious? He carefully offered, as he would have done the first time he’d worn velvet, if Bradley had bothered asking him then: ‘I like it, is all.’

‘But it’s so –’ Bradley gestured above him where he lay, as if trying to pull the right words out of the air – ‘so last century!’

Colin peered down at the jeans, damp now with their mingled spunk, and even as he started wriggling out of them, he quietly commented, ‘Still. Seem to get a reaction.’

Bradley just looked at him, full of wanting and irritation and affection and frustration, and obviously just deeply equivocal about the whole thing. This was their third time. Despite his woeful destiny when it came to love, Colin didn’t want it to be their last time. Not yet.

Colin stood, wiped off the rest of the spunk from his belly, and tossed the jeans over to land on the laundry pile. Naked now, he reached into the darkest corner of his wardrobe, rummaged around a bit, and brought out a pair of soft velvet track pants in a midnight blue. He held them up, considering them for a moment, letting the light shimmer over the surface. ‘What about these?’ he eventually asked, looking to Bradley. ‘These get a reaction…?’

‘ _God_ , Colin,’ Bradley swore, ‘they’re the same colour as your suit today. God, I could hardly keep my hands from –’

‘From what?’ Colin prompted when Bradley faltered into silence. But Bradley shook his head. He wouldn’t say. After a moment, Colin asked, ‘If you came over one day. For a coffee maybe. After we’d seen a film or something. And you saw me in these…’

‘ _Yes_ ,’ said Bradley, the word rasping in his throat.

‘So maybe,’ Colin murmured, almost to himself, ‘that’s one more time.’ He turned back to the wardrobe, put the track pants away, and after a moment showed Bradley a beautiful green shawl. Velvet, of course, and it even had a Celtic knot pattern in the texture. ‘What about this?’ he asked, swirling it up in the air and down to wrap round himself, just low enough that his shoulders and his collarbones poked out just above it, and his cock must be peeking out below.

_‘Yes.’_

‘And even…?’ He dared reach for the slinky little black dress he’d found, and held it up against himself. Maybe that was going too far, but he gathered himself and looked across at Bradley – 

Bradley – who was looking back, confused but hungry. ‘God,’ he said, his voice almost painfully rough, but so very heartfelt. ‘God, Colin, come here, would you?’

He went. He let the dress slip to the floor, but he left the shawl hooked round his arms, and pushed onto the bed, pushed into Bradley’s encompassing embrace – Bradley rolling him back to lie half over him, and Colin was wrapped up now in velvet and in strength. He lay there, grounded and vulnerable and utterly open and making himself _feel_ that, making himself _be_ it. 

‘How many of those things do you have in there?’ Bradley asked roughly.

‘As many as I could find,’ he admitted. ‘Enough to keep you coming back for a while.’

‘Good, then,’ said Bradley. He leaned in, and they kissed. Slowly. Thoughtfully. Deeply. When Bradley lifted his head again, he considered Colin for a long long while.

And Colin let himself be considered. It got easier, as time flowed past.

Eventually Bradley said, ‘It’s not about the clothes, you know.’

‘No?’ Colin asked lightly.

‘No.’ Bradley shook his head. ‘It’s you,’ he said. ‘ _You’re_ velvet.’

Colin grinned, and a laugh escaped him. ‘Am not,’ he argued, though he suspected that actually he very much wanted to be.

‘You are. You’re velvet. You’re wrong and old–fashioned and _intensely_ annoying and you’re so fucking beautiful I can’t even keep my hands off you, and –’

And after that they didn’t need words.

♦

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [You're Velvet {art}](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1527653) by [altocello](https://archiveofourown.org/users/altocello/pseuds/altocello)




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